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Analysis Of X-Men: Days Of The Future Past

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Analysis Of X-Men: Days Of The Future Past
At the Intersection of Mutant and Chicana:
Using X-Men and Gloria Anzaldúa to Understand Cultural Imperialism
Throughout history, humanity has witnessed the consequences of numerous imperialist conquests, with culture being only one of the many facets of civilization affected by them. As humankind perceives the mutants as a threat in the 2014 film, X-Men: Days of the Future Past, the development of highly specialized weapons to destroy the mutants becomes a reality, a reality that led the mutant subspecies to the brink of extinction. Likewise, in her essay “How To Tame a Wild Tongue”, Gloria Anzaldúa also casts light on cultural imperialism, specifically through the lens of the sociocultural struggles that Mexican immigrants and Chicanos face …show more content…
Professor X’s opening lines of the X-Men film set the tone for the setting of the movie, a time when humanity is so scared of what is different and foreign to it, the mutants, that is doing everything in its power to annihilate them, “A world of war, suffering, loss on both sides. Mutants, and the humans who dared to help them, fighting an enemy we cannot defeat” (X-Men: Days of the Future Past). Gloria Anzaldúa opens her essay “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” with a very similar tone. She uses a metaphor to express the brutality and violence of the acculturation process. Historically, violence tends to accompany the imperialist process; one example of this was the “New Imperialism” period, a moment in history that not only left behind a incredibly high death toll and a even bigger list of crimes against humanity, but also the European colonization resulted in the erasure of cultures, belief systems and worldviews. Events like this one are parallel to the struggle that mutants face in X-Men: Days of the Future Past. Professor X’s words are a testimony of the violence that humanity inflicted on the mutants, a violence stemmed from humanity’s prejudice and bigotry towards mutants, leading humans to a pursue of the complete obliteration of the mutant subspecies, taking not only their lives, but also their subculture and worldview with
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